This whole thing seems to be because a few frustrated users are taking this adversarial stance like it's them versus "the gentoo developers", and like "the gentoo developers" are this massive homogeneous swarm of bug-fixing brainpower that can be pointed at a bug and fired like a cannon at will.

The gentoo devs are individual people, each with individual skills & expertise, with real day jobs and real lives, and all with human limitations.

This whole thing seems to be because a few frustrated users are taking this adversarial stance like it's them versus "the gentoo developers", and like "the gentoo developers" are this massive homogeneous swarm of bug-fixing brainpower that can be pointed at a bug and fired like a cannon at will.

++ though they're what I'd call "power-users" in Gentoo terms, which has more relevance to programming.

Quote:

The gentoo devs are individual people, each with individual skills & expertise, with real day jobs and real lives, and all with human limitations.

Indeed. Just like users, everyone can have a bad hair-day. After all, every Gentoo developer started out as a user, since it's totally unpaid. While the latter should make them more interested in getting others to share the workload, the skills required to develop ebuilds, are not the skills required to recruit other people to do the same thing. Nor should we pretend they are, or ever will be. That doesn't mean they can't overlap, nor that recruiters can't come from other teams. It's just rare to have both social and technical skills, especially when you're younger and have the free time and inclination to make a reputation, which is what attracts some people to Free software.

When it goes on for a period and becomes something you feel you have to take out publically, and particularly if you feel you want to swear at the other person, you're probably burning-out. Although the latter can happen when someone decides to humiliate you for no reason. You have to walk away from the keyboard and think about things, including something else for a bit, and preferably a day or so, before responding.

Burnout is the bane of anyone in software. It's completely random as a whole, since there are so many circumstances outside our control. The one thing you can predict is that in any given group of programmers, it will happen. The bigger the group the more likely and the more frequent. "Excrement happens."

The OP is right tho.
If people are no longer maintaining a port.. package remove them as maintainer. I understand real life issues. I understand that it's voluntary.
But either you're a maintainer and you're taking care of the problems or you're not. Patch submitted, no reaction for 2 weeks, remove maintainer.
Maybe that's too harsh but come on. What good is a maintainer that doesn't maintain. That's not a maintainer, that's dead meat.

Clean house, list packages that need a maintainer.
Promote, go to the "social media" sites and announce that those packages need maintainers.

Become more transparent.
For starters write a good step by step tutorial of EAPI 5.
Explain the philosophy and purpose of Gentoo in the installation handbook.
Maybe write some kind of auto or semi auto ebuild creator.
If you're missing people write tools to fill the spots.
And for heaven's sake don't restrict yourself, look for what is best, most efficient, least maintainance, most simple and go forward.

Times are changing. Software development has changed and is still rapidly changing.
Btw I'm curious, did you receive anything from Google?

The problem is society. 18yolds nowadays have learned that money makes the world go round.
Kids have their mobile devices, they don't sit in front of a home computer all day. They learn to press buttons and not deal with computer problems.
The pool is shrinking in the long run. Who will run the whole mess in 10 20 years? 40 when we start dieing out and the 30 yolds only know how to press buttons and are mind-blanked consumers because they are trained to be dumb by dumb games and not facing challenges.

tbh there has not been much progress from 10 years ago to now. I do see some good improvements recently tho. So someone is doing something and that's good. Target the young people. If I could write machine code and assemly language instructions as a 12 year old kids of today also can learn to write shell scripts of ebuilds or c or python or php or w/e. Kids are super smart. Target kids (young teens). Get some new blood. Raise a new generation of free and open source enthusiasts. Not your problem? Then die out in a few decades and have the big corps dominating everything.

Maybe the OPs tone wasn't right but maybe he's giving you the virtual kick in the butt that is needed.

If people are no longer maintaining a port.. package remove them as maintainer. I understand real life issues. I understand that it's voluntary. But either you're a maintainer and you're taking care of the problems or you're not. Patch submitted, no reaction for 2 weeks, remove maintainer. Maybe that's too harsh but come on. What good is a maintainer that doesn't maintain. That's not a maintainer, that's dead meat.

The patch was applied a day after it was submitted, in a somewhat more reasonable form since it didn't pass the review. The maintainers don't have any issues at all here.

Warning: This application is under trial period and all data will be cleared on final release.

dalu wrote:

And for heaven's sake don't restrict yourself, look for what is best, most efficient, least maintainance, most simple and go forward.

Not sure what you mean by this, by this logic we should throw a lot out of the tree (even most desktop environments) that is otherwise properly available.

dalu wrote:

Times are changing. Software development has changed and is still rapidly changing.

Sounds good.

dalu wrote:

Btw I'm curious, did you receive anything from Google?

Yes, Gentoo Linux itself.

dalu wrote:

The problem is society. 18yolds nowadays have learned that money makes the world go round.

I'm not much older than them and don't have a problem with that.

dalu wrote:

Kids have their mobile devices, they don't sit in front of a home computer all day.

They actually do both.

dalu wrote:

They learn to press buttons and not deal with computer problems.

It are usually the children that are able to fix computer problems their elders have.

dalu wrote:

The pool is shrinking in the long run.

Until it rains again; if not, there will be another ice age.

dalu wrote:

Who will run the whole mess in 10 20 years? 40 when we start dieing out and the 30 yolds only know how to press buttons and are mind-blanked consumers because they are trained to be dumb by dumb games and not facing challenges.

There's nothing that prohibits them from facing challenges, not all you see is done by people younger than 30 years old.

dalu wrote:

tbh there has not been much progress from 10 years ago to now.

Until you look back at it in another 10 years, because you refuse to see what you're living in; those who follow will also see the progress made.

dalu wrote:

I do see some good improvements recently tho. So someone is doing something and that's good.

Not sure why you're complaining then.

dalu wrote:

Target the young people. If I could write machine code and assemly language instructions as a 12 year old kids of today also can learn to write shell scripts of ebuilds or c or python or php or w/e. Kids are super smart. Target kids (young teens). Get some new blood. Raise a new generation of free and open source enthusiasts. Not your problem? Then die out in a few decades and have the big corps dominating everything.

It's not about writing machine code or instructions, but it's about doing something useful with it; there are barely any 12 year old kids that can do that.

Young teens are the wrong target, their attention span shifts too fast; being a Gentoo Developer is different, it's quite a commitment of years and not a "I fix something in the Portage tree and I'm gone" week.

dalu wrote:

Maybe the OPs tone wasn't right but maybe he's giving you the virtual kick in the butt that is needed.

Young teens are the wrong target, their attention span shifts too fast; being a Gentoo Developer is different, it's quite a commitment of years and not a "I fix something in the Portage tree and I'm gone" week.

Young teens are the most important target. They have a huge potential, and your task - to reveal it.
If you continue to regard them as narrow-minded fidgety monkeys, then they will remain so.
The OP is really restless. Of course, you can't react for any patch request, but he tried to do some useful thing for people, and maybe it makes sense to allow him to do part of your job since you have no time to do it yourself?
It would be helpful to both of you.

Young teens are the wrong target, their attention span shifts too fast; being a Gentoo Developer is different, it's quite a commitment of years and not a "I fix something in the Portage tree and I'm gone" week.

Young teens are the most important target. They have a huge potential, and your task - to reveal it.

Yet, their attention span shifts too fast; ...

creaker wrote:

If you continue to regard them as narrow-minded fidgety monkeys, then they will remain so.

That's what you think of them, I did not state such thing.

creaker wrote:

The OP is really restless. Of course, you can't react for any patch request, but he tried to do some useful thing for people, and maybe it makes sense to allow him to do part of your job since you have no time to do it yourself? It would be helpful to both of you.

I don't see how aggressive attention spans are going to yield anything useful but breaking the Portage tree, which requires much more than just time to recover from.

I expected such a response.
...aggressive...portage breaking...aggressive...portage breaking...
Obstinacy worthy of a better cause.
After all, this man is trying to fix thing that devs broke/done improperly .
Which of you two is more dangerous for a Portage tree?
Do not answer, I guess, what would be your answer:
...aggressive...portage breaking...aggressive...portage breaking...